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An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at GDC Europe this week, BioWare Montreal's Fernando Melo spoke about how the oft-disparaged first-day downloadable content for video games is actually something a significant amount of players want. 'Melo argued that on the occasions when BioWare hasn't provided DLC from day one, those players who complete the game quickly then complained that there was nothing more to play and asked for extra content. If DLC isn't provided for these players, they may well move on to a different game and never come back to play DLC later on. As proof that day one DLC also works in terms of sales, Melo said that 53 percent of all sales for the first Dragon Age: Origins DLC pack — which was released on the same day as the full game — were made on release day."

Day 1 DLC is generally worked on in the months between going gold and certification. Would it be better for them to add an arbitrary delay so that the DLC, which is completed in time for day 1, is instead delivered on day 30 or 60?
Granted, this is generally the reason with Console games, but then again most day 1 DLC is for consoles (and their PC versions).

I don't know about consoles, but in PC games this is called a patch. If there is still work to be done in the 30-60 days before release that can't be included in the main release, you release it as a patch on day 1. What is the difference between dlc and a patch you ask? Easy, dlc is a patch that costs money. Support companies like tripwire interactive. Their game Red Orchestra patched in 3 separate content expansions over the game's lifetime, and users weren't charged a cent. These expansions contained new maps, vehicles, skins, weapons, just about a complete new version of the game. Tripwire is also just an example, there are many companies that continue to support and reward their customers for the initial purchase. Bioware used to be good. New bioware can suck my dick, and if they are very very good at it they might get some liquid dlc.

Actually, the difference between DLC and a patch is a that a patch is supposed to fix and DLC is supposed to add. I liked the Bioware DLC for Dragons Age. It wasn't a part of the story, but it added to it.

It seems to me that the main game is what we used to get as a playable demo. A few hours of free but limited game-play to give you a taste of the full unlocked game. Now those two-to-four hours are the full game.

If over 50% of your players finish your whole AAA game on the release day, you're doing it wrong.

That was my first thought... if your game doesn't offer enough play/replay value out of the box to justify the $50-70 purchase, WTF!? why are you charging more to make it so? It's worht noting that I stopped playing games 6-8 years ago since DRM became so common... I didn't want to follow it... I have done a couple humble bundles, and donated for the ouya kickstarter though.

What happens 10 years from now when I want to play my favorite classic game on my Windows 11 PC, but it won't work without the "patch" or downloadable content & the company no longer exists (or does exist but won't supply the files online)???

This looks like very obvious planned obsolescence to me. Release a game that is incomplete in the store & only works due to an internet download/patch, but later erase the patch so it can never be played again. (Thereby forcing people to buy new games

Stop milking the current game and work on the next expansion or the next title in the franchise or something entirely new? Think of all the wasted time in "let's add five new stupid missions to this open world game!" and "let's add fourteen new hats and twelve tee-shirts!" development.

How is it that a game used to be able to launch and six months or a year later, they could release a huge $30 expansion pack with a crap-ton of content and a lot of thought put into it? Yet, today, they ha

Since we have delays all the time in the gaming world, why not wait until the DLC is done, or better yet, stop working on DLC as an add-on and fix the original game? That way, when the game's out for a while, a company can extend the life of the game (not horse armor *cough*) adding additional quests, etc. Adding "new armor types" and so forth (unless tied to a quest) would be pointless and milks the dough of the user who already likes the game because he purchased it.

Because there's a certification process required by the platform owner to ensure baseline quality. During that process only bug fixes go into the product. Once approved for physical media, there's manufacturing and logistics to get the game in the stores, etc. that also adds significant delay.

Bottom line is, for a AAA game, there's a good 2 months at the very least before launch when nothing much goes on with the game. DLC is worked on in that period, and if it doesn't hit the mark and needs 2-3 weeks more, it's not a big deal. Risk management.

I'm a game developper and I know people like to rag on DLC and how it's bad and mean (But 20$ expansion packs were totally cool back in the day, go figure), but it's extra content. Yes, there's on-disc DLC (most often tied into promotion with different stores) and stuff like that. Yes there are DLC packages that are a total rip-off. But it's just a delivery method...

NO, it doesn't feel like extra content! People felt expansion packs were totally cool cause THEY _ARE_ TOTALLY COOL. Day 1 and Month 1 DLCs feel like aspects that were planned for the game and then taken out during the meeting with marketing & sales, or budgeting. DLC should NOT feel like the missing parts of a game. What were "expansion packs" of yesterday feel like the of sequels today, and yes, they are still cool. DLC feels like crap.

NO, it doesn't feel like extra content! People felt expansion packs were totally cool cause THEY _ARE_ TOTALLY COOL. Day 1 and Month 1 DLCs feel like aspects that were planned for the game and then taken out during the meeting with marketing & sales, or budgeting. DLC should NOT feel like the missing parts of a game. What were "expansion packs" of yesterday feel like the of sequels today, and yes, they are still cool. DLC feels like crap.

This person hits in on the head. In the old days expansion packs were more like sequels (or intermediate episodes until the actual sequel), they always took place after the game.

DLCs on the other hand tend to be content that didn't make it into the game, this is apparent in that they are usually set inside the timeline of the game rather than after it. It's really obvious when the game refers to the DLC content, making it apparent that it was cut out (or deliberately held behind). Fallout: New Vegas is a good example of this with the Lonesome Road DLC, right from the first hour of the game NPCs are already referencing it. Also unlike Fallout 3 which had DLCs retcon their entrances into the game world where they didn't exist before (entire buildings popping out of nowhere) in New Vegas the entrances to the DLC locations are not only already in the game world but even have quick-travel points on the map.

The developers of Fallout: New Vegas admitted that the game needed another several months to truly be finished, just about everything in the DLCs was meant to be in the game itself (and would have been much better integrated into it) and even the game world map has huge areas that you never visit (that empty space to the West is where The Divide is located). However the publishers would much rather put those parts into DLCs so they can charge more for it, then later release a new edition of the game with all the DLCs included (and the price jacked up to cover it).

there said it. and in case of for example dragon age 2 they would have needed to make an entire another game for the game to be worthwhile... it would need a dlc the size of the original game so that it would feel like something else than fan made mod for nwn, I mean, fan made expansion for da1 would feel better..

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting, 1080p graphics, online play, etc. etc. etc.You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

Sure I can. Know why? The user base is increasing. The effeciencies are getting better. Sure there is more production value and more complex mechanisms going into games but they sure are not getting longer by any significant amount. I certanly don't weep for the game companies. They are ruthless with firings of staff and yet they reap enourmous profits. If they are not fleecing the consumer then fine but when they start giving us the middle finger then I start getting a little frustrated.

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting, 1080p graphics, online play, etc. etc. etc.You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

The fuck?

I've played plenty of games in the late 90s and early 00s that were fully voice acted and had LAN if not online play. Hell, fucking Command and Conquer 95 (which came out in 1995) had fully acted FMVs with actors and sound stages. Jesus Christ. Ever played Half-Life (the first one), that was 1998. You're full of crap.

The problem has nothing to do with production costs, it's the business model that's changed. The gaming industry used to be made up of people who loved games and wanted to make a reasonable profit producing new awesome ones. It's now made of suits that treat their product as a line item in a spreadsheet and a check-list, there's no drive for quality or fair dealing; very few people want to make a good game nowadays, they just want to make McDonalds — something that achieves maximum revenue with a minimum of investment or artistic integrity.

"DLC feels like crap."So don't buy it?And if the main game isn't worth the money, don't buy that either.

Can you teach me how to see into the future as well? I don't see how else I can avoid paying for a non-refundable product that sucks even though I can't know that it sucks before I paid for it.

The problem with DLC isn't one of money, but that it fractures the game. Instead of one well designed product that fits together, you have a dozens of products that sort of kind of fit together. Bonus DLC weapons are often out of balance, the story DLC often doesn't quite fit in, multiplayer maps just make it more troublesome to find people to play with and costumes are just useless. "Don't buy" isn't a solution, as the main game still might reference the missing content, so when you don't buy it, you still know there is a piece missing from the game that makes it feel incomplete and sometimes you don't even know you got it, as it automatically comes with your Game of the Year edition. There is also a general lack of quality in DLC, as most of it ends up being far less quality then the main game.

Sometimes there is of course DLC that takes more the form of an expansion pack and truly does tell a piece of story that is completely optional to the main game and still doesn't feel like a useless addition, but even those can be a little annoying, as DLC means they have to be short and cheap. Thus even when they are actually good, they just end up feeling short and a full blown expansion pack would have been better.

In the end DLC is nothing but a money grab and nobody can honestly tell me that it's somehow the best way to deliver a game to give the user the best experience. DLC has done nothing but make gaming more complicated and frustrating. From a business standpoint it makes sense, from an entertainment point of view it's a really shitty idea.

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting,

Voice acting has been a normal feature since 1993, it has been around for a while. Network play existed even earlier and plenty games on my Amiga had Modem support. 1080? Nothing all to special, a good CRT could give you 1280x1024 long before any HD-TV was around.

Not to mention Valve has already shown us that with digital distribution its better to have LOWER not higher prices if you want maximum profits. I wish I'd thought to save the link because there was a little article I read when origin was about to roll out where one of the guys from Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700% because it doesn't cost shit to distribute digitally and the amount of people they had buying caused their returns on the game to go through the roof.

People hate the day 1 DLC because its often EXACTLY what it feels like, core sections of the game removed and then resold, so that a $60 game becomes a $90+ game just to have a complete working game, its a fricking ripoff. There is only ONE type of day 1 DLC that doesn't piss me off and that is the non gameplay related silly shit, the TF2 hats and SR 3 silly costumes kinda stuff where you can tell its just the devs goofing off. I mean nowhere in SR 3 that I saw were the characters talking about how they needed to get a witch costume and fly on a broom or drive around in a people shooting Genkimobile.

> Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700%

Actually L4D1 was 3000% more sales;-)

You're probably thinking of the 1600% new steam customers.i.e."Newell also mentioned that new Steam customers jumped 1600% over the same weekend, according to G4TV. Retail sales remained constant."

They also revealed gamers are extremely sensitive to pricing. (Digressing slightly, Hell most of my steam friends don't buy new games until they go one sale for $10. We already got a big backlog of great games to play, we'll get all the patches, plus we'll have better hardware to run a 2-year old game on.)

Because there's a certification process required by the platform owner to ensure baseline quality.

And that process does not apply to DLC content? Are you sure?

Downloadables are faster.

You might not know this, but once a product is finished, there's often a 2+ month lead time before it can be sold. In that time, the pressings have to be scheduled in, followed by the warehousing and distribution.

If the game is ready, it goes into cert, which can take a month while issues that come up are fixed and resolved. In the meantime, you have a bunch of developers sitting around (rarely do you get something that involves the entire team - those kind of bugs are usually caught before it goes into cert). Once approved, the discs can be pressed (alongside with other things for special and limited editions), which can take another month, from then it's another month to ship it to the various retailer warehouses and for them to ship it to their individual stores.

So there can easily be a 2-to-3 month period of idleness for developers. You could either lay most of them off, keeping the few you need to handle launch day issues, or have them producing DLC in the meantime. As it's downloadable, once it's passed cert, it goes into the store - no waiting for pressing or distribution (which are the slow parts).

The process can be sped up if you're doing a console exclusive title or if the manufacturer really wants your game, but you're still looking at over a month.

Even if they put all the day-1 content on the disc and delay the certification and release by a month, you'd still have idle developers during cert/pressing/distribution. Who might as well work on DLC and probably finish some stuff they couldn't do during main development. Leading to more day-1 DLC.

Even if they put all the day-1 content on the disc and delay the certification and release by a month, you'd still have idle developers during cert/pressing/distribution.

Based on the number of bugs we are seeing in "certified" games, there should never be idle developers.

That "down" time could be used for more rigorous testing like finding and fixing of bugs not caught by the "certification" process. I'm playing Fallout 2 for the first time right now, and the nearly 500 extra bug fixes from the "unofficial" patch makes the game much more playable. Add in the nearly 300 bugs fixed before this by official patches, plus the fact that about 30 or so of these bugs were of the

Its a different process. I also work in the gaming industry, and on consoles.

The base game is usually a 10 week lead time from 'gold' (or final) till its on the shelves. Most of that time is certification with 1st party. There's one first party that wants 12 weeks of cert time. I've also worked on a game with an accelerated release schedule. Final, cert and ship in 3-4 weeks

Patches are usually 2 weeks, though maybe 4 weeks sometimes. Though I've had patch go through in two days before, of course that was the second submission of the patch, and the change was as stupid icon change (We put it on the left, where it fit better with the art, they demanded it on the right).

If the DLC doesn't have compiled code in it, then the DLC usually breezes through, maybe taking a week, though one 1st party likes to take 6 weeks with them.

Anyone in the industry that's had to deal with certification can tell you what a pain it is. There's no consistency to the process. One game might submit following one process and a game released three weeks later might follow a different process, it all depends on how much the 1st party wants your game on their console. Or how much they want to screw around with you.

Bottom line is, for a AAA game, there's a good 2 months at the very least before launch when nothing much goes on with the game. DLC is worked on in that period, and if it doesn't hit the mark and needs 2-3 weeks more, it's not a big deal. Risk management.

That doesn't explain the "DLC" that is now commonly shipped with the games to minimize the downloading process.

I come from the old school of thought on that one too, but I've accepted DLC.

The reason I want day-1 DLC is because I don't want to have to play the game over again in 3 months once it's all released.

Looking specifically at Mass Effect 2 and 3, The DLCs aren't extra. They are part of the original story line. Downloading new DLC after you've finished the game means you'll have to either restart it or load a save game and continue just before the point of no return.

Games used to have things like pre-order bonuses and so on. That was fine when there were a lot less games, getting a guaranteed pre order was trivial and when you could have reasonable confidence that a developer wouldn't make crap.

But times change. If you're a bit OCD, a bit of a completionist or if you just want everything having all the goodies some people get for 'free' (or bundled with things you don't want like a statue) you still might want that same content, which is DLC, and might be willing to pay for it.

Some of the Bioware DLC then makes sense, in the scope of say an extra character or an extra mission that you want to see when you play the game. And for say 5 dollars it's still cheaper than a 10 dollar special edition with an art book that you don't want. Think of some DLC then as 'a la carte' limited/collectors/special edition parts.

Day-1 DLC was supposed to be in Day-0 product.

That's both subjective on a case by case basis, and really hard to argue in a lot of cases. Charging 5 dollars for day 1 DLC is partly a way of increasing the price by 5 dollars but cutting the various middle men out of the process. If you are a semi indie studio and you sell a game for 50 bucks at Walmart, walmart takes about 15 bucks (steam, gamestop about the same), your publisher takes 17 or so, and you're left with 17. But you get 100% of the DLC. So rather than getting 17 dollars for a copy you just got 22 (without having to push the whole cost through the chain). Usually publishers these days are smart enough to demand a cut of the DLC so it goes from being the publisher getting 35 bucks to split with you to getting 40 to split with you, but either way, the developer still takes home a lot more cash this way.

Most DLC is also not really major, relative to the price. A 5 dollar DLC doesn't have 1/10th the content of the game in it, if you're really lucky it has 1/20th, so you're significantly overpaying for that one piece of content in the hopes that more money goes back to the people who actually made the product than the people who distributed the product or left it in a box in their bathroom waiting for you.

Lets take a non bioware topical example: Guild Wars 2. Every retailer near where I am sold out on pre -orders of the collectors edition day one. Too bad I was away that day on business and missed my pre-order chance. Now with a 'digital deluxe' or similar edition I'm basically buying in a bundled DLC, call it whatever you want, you're paying for day 1 DLC. So I can't get the collectors edition, or at least, I can't be sure I can get the collectors edition, but I can be reasonably sure I can get the important game content one way or another.

In short: your concept of DLC and his aren't necessarily the same thing. You're not wrong, but neither is he. That perspective matters a lot. He's talking to other game developers, and in that sense he's right. Day 1 DLC (including in collectors editions or content that could have been in collectors editions but a player didn't buy that) is hugely popular, and that should be obvious enough to everyone.

Extra less relevant bits:Dragon age origins (the product in question) launched with 3 version. Regular retail. Collectors (physical) and digital deluxe. The digital deluxe had a *code* to download the day 1 DLC for free (so he's counting that in his stats almost certainly since it wasn't technically bundled), but the digital deluxe had a soundtrack and some desktop theme crap too. Why pay for the sound track and desktop wallpapers when you can just buy the actually game content for 7 bucks or whatever, save yourself 3 dollars, (or maybe 13, i can't remember). In his context a significant portion of the launch day had people buying basically the 2 special editions or a la carte versions of the special editions.

If only those companies had a convenient way to deliver that day-1 DLC without hogging all the server bandwidth. Some sort of means to piggyback the DLC on the physical media shipped with the original game perhaps. With some effort they might even be able to integrate the activation mechanism of the DLC with the activation mechanism of the original game.

Not to mention you could find players that tried to excuse the Diablo 3 always online douchebaggery as well, never underestimate the ability of the fanbois to take a good asspounding by the corps and beg for more.

Personally if they want to sell hats or some other non game changing crap? I have no problem with that. A good example would be Saints Row 3 and the silly costumes, hell I bought a few of those on the last Steam sale because I thought some of it looked like a good goof. But yeah when they are sel

No one completes a RPG in a day. The real problem are the CoD/BF kiddies who buy the crap for their action games. Developers and publishers have seen this as a "OMG MONIES" mechanism and believe it will translate over into PC gaming, to a point it has, and to a point it hasn't. Plenty of gamers have said fuck you, plenty like me who play in ladder tournaments(Shogun 2) don't have much of a choice, if we want to keep up with other people. But I just wait until there's a sale on that stuff, I'll buy DLC,

It makes no difference to the company whether you play a game or not, the only thing that matters is whether you pay for it. If you pirate to save money, then yes that's wrong. If you pirate because you were not going to buy it anyway, then that's fine.

Companies need to learn to offer good games. Day 1 DLCs are scams. Short games are scams. DRM is a scam. The moment your game has any of these attributes, I do not buy it. However I do buy a few dozen games and spend over $1000 a year on games

But more importantly: I did not pirate until recently. I was in full boycott mode when it came to music, movies and games I didn't like.But then some companies decided they could violate our rights to make profits - you've heard of SOPA I presume. From then on, this was war. I no longer care about being nice and doing the right thing and not using what I didn't pay for. Now I download for free from all the companies who supported SOPA or tried to make DRM circumvention illegal, etc.

What's that going to do? Whether you download it or boycott it, the effect is almost exactly the same (except that in one scenario, you have a game). It's not as if they lose money they already possess if you download their game, so you might as well have just continued boycotting them.

If you pirate because you were not going to buy it anyway, then that's fine.

No, it's not. Clearly you've decided you actually want the game and will derive some enjoyment from it. Therefore it has a value to you, and you're just pirating because you're cheap. This "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" line is the biggest load of bullshit ever spouted, because 90% of the people saying it are just spouting the party line to justify that they're cheapskates who don't feel they should have to pay for someone else's work.

Yes, it has value to me. However, games only have a value of up to ~10EUR to me, so if the game is sold of less than 10EUR I am likely to buy it (and I buy the indie games that I think are worth it, I also buy some games when there is Steam sale), but I will not pay 50EUR for a game. Instead of buying a game, I'd rather buy another tape deck, buy a bunch of records or build some circuit - I would derive more enjoyment from any of those alternatives than the game, so a game is not worth 50EUR to me.

The jackass who thinks you shouldn't have all the content available on day one of the game (even though development is finished) not only shouldn't be paid, but should be fired and has no place in this business.

and by stealing they have the moral high ground. Guess what - they don't.

Well, this matter is about copyright infringement. But whether or not they have the "moral high ground" (whatever that means) is completely subjective. I think it's rather pointless since it's not as if you're taking away the company's existing money, but it's still an opinion. The fact that it's consistently stated as a fact doesn't mean it is a fact.

Exactly. It's interesting that the Bioware drone mentions Dragon Age, since the DLC was advertised IN the game. You reached a quest giver, and he told you that you had to buy his quest!

And that is the reason I never completed the game, I got sick to death of having the suspension of disbelief ruined by its blatant attempts to nickle-and-dime me.
Okay, so I was kind of pissed that I wasn't going to get the Werewolf Army I'd hoped for to battle the undead, but what pushed me to breaking point was finding someone on the way to the Dwarf City who was desperate to have their Significant Other rescued or somesuch. I figured it would help me get over losing the wolf army, so I agreed - and he demanded money for the privilege of having his beloved back. So I played System Shock instead.

I'm willing to be that he's including in his numbers all the people who bought editions of the game that came with the DLC included.

For DAO, these included a home base with a storage chest [wikia.com]. I mean, FFS, a home base with a storage facility has been part of the RPG milieu for as long as I can remember (in games where you have a limited inventory capacity). You have sufficient camp followers with wagons in DAO to justify a chest being part of your camp, so it's not don

I'm old and crotchety and can't stand that sort of whining either, but I think it's less "I want it now" and more to do with what publishers can get away for their boxed releases. I think the gaming audience does have some legitimate complaints about this sort of stuff.

True. And that's mostly because they are now making games too full of shiny. Lots of cutscenes, voice actors, gorgeous maps and models, a plethora of sidequests... which is great, really, but it drives the cost of the thing way up. And in the midst of all that, they often forget to make the game interesting to play. Or even finish the damn thing. Me, I'd rather have lots of 9.99 games like Braid than 59.99 + 9.99 DLC like Mass Effect 3. The first is way cheaper to make, but incredible from start to finish and never, ever, feels stale. An engrossing experience from start to finish. The latter is amazing mostly because of its magnitude, but its gameplay is quite repetitive, most of its characters feel superfluous because of the current trend towards extreme story modularization (which is The Way Of The DLC, BTW) and... let's just not speak about that sorry excuse for an ending, ok?

I know you're being sarcastic but episodic gaming would be a better solution for what these companies want to do. You could either buy a game pass for $60 and get all the DLC as it comes out for free or you could buy each individual DLC as it comes out which would be a bit more in the end. They could charge some people more for their game and would piss fewer people off the only downside is they couldn't do a big release all at once.

They don't just take that "Day One DLC" that everybody wants so much, and just makes it a part of the initial release at no extra charge. Why does it have to be DLC at all? It's already finished and ready to be played, right? So why isn't already on the disk with the rest of the content I bought? If people are finishing your game and complaining they want more to do, it doesn't mean people want to pay MORE for more content. It means people didn't feel they got $60 worth of content in the game, only for the publisher to turn around and demand more money if you want to be satisfied.
If somebody orders a full cake, you cannot only give them 3/4's of it, charge extra for the remaining 1/4, and then turn around and claim that people are obviously clamoring to pay for that extra 1/4. That's now how it works, Bioware.

I agree with making it part of the release at no extra charge, but there is a reason for it to be DLC. From the time the game is finished to when it actually goes on sale there's a period of 1-2 months. During this time you can either take the people that worked on the game and assign them to a new project or you can have them work on additional content for the game that wasn't finished by the deadline. (note that this doesn't apply for the on disc DLC that some companies have put out)

People who rail against day 1 DLC have no idea how releasing a game works. Especially with giant sprawling games, once you near the release date, there are a lot of specialists who have completed their contribution to the final project. Artists may be done with their portion, story writers may be done with their portion, certain programming teams may be done with their portion, etc. They need something to do, so they start working on DLC.

"Ah, but they could put that right on the disc in the first place!", you may say. No, they can't. By this point, the game needs to be finalized so they can thoroughly test it, create a master copy, and begin mass production. In the month(s) that this can take on a large title, there's plenty of time to get a significant DLC pack out.

Now, I'm not saying ALL day 1 DLC is because of this (especially rageworthy is something that's on-disc but a day 1 "unlock" DLC) but a very significant portion is. They're not trying to cheat you out of content you should have had, they're just making good use of the time it takes for a game to go from finished to available in stores.

It's not illegal to crack a game in order to unlock content? It would seem to be that when a person purchases a disc, they've purchased all content on said disc whether or not it is easily accessible, right?

Perhaps instead of devoting those specialists to DLC, they could devote them to fixing the broken game instead (seriously it took 5 fucking patches to get Skyrim even playable) so that the Day 1 patch makes the game playable?

"People who rail against day 1 DLC have no idea how releasing a game works. "

No this is all because of modern development costs and team sizes, in the late 90's early 2000's game team sizes were orders of magnitude smaller as well as costs to develop said game. DLC is a way to try to exploit gamers for extra cash by cutting up and parcelling out pieces of the game that you already had planned from the get go during the design phase. When content was less costly and lower resolution you could produce more

How often do YOU write code for ridiculously complex systems that always works for every use case anyone ever throws at it and stays bug free forever?

I'm not in the game industry, but with the projects I work on things are somewhat parallel. There are people (DB admins, UI designers, etc) whose contributions are mostly in the beginning of a project who can start working on V2 features once they've finished up the V1 stuff. Bugs happen, and they need to be fixed after people start using the product in weird ways and uncover them.

I'd think that Slashdot of all places would have people who understand how this stuff works.

The Console gaming industry is a bit different. You get a set spec where you know what the hardware will be. And up until the advent of HDD being included "Patching" wasn't an option. QA is much better when the industry doesn't rely on patching and DLC to correct their games.

You forget the most important thing in any business regardless of sector: customers.

Give them what they want (regardless of how silly or selfish the demand) or they will go elsewhere.

With digital content there is another factor to consider. If I feel slighted by a company that I give money to, why would I give them any more when any torrent site can give me a better product, faster, and for free?

Seems that you are the one with the entitlement issues. Customers don't owe you a salary, they don't owe you anything. It is up to you to prove that you are worthy of your salary by making the customer feel good about giving it to you.

Wow...You're complaining about entitlement issues? You're the one advocating stealing a company's product because you feel slighted by them trying to cover the ever-increasing costs of making all that content for their customers. And you wonder why companies are resorting to horrible DRM and day-1 DLC? Just look in the mirror for the real reason companies are reacting this way.

How it actually works: the game studio cuts features out of a game to make the release date. Before money-grubbing-fucksticks came up with the idea of nickle and diming their customers, this cut content would be released when the main game was complete and the bugs were worked out.

For free. As were small and medium expansions of the game to keep people buying it.

Now, not only are those bug fixes and missing features being turned into paid for "DLC", but games are planned from the beginning to have nickle and dimed bullshit from the first day of release.

This! Additionally, once the decision is made to turn the "side" content into DLC, some of the experienced folk who make awesome stuff more awesome are instead assigned to head / work on the DLC team. This means your core game would have been even more awesome than if the DLC hadn't been made. No game is ever finished, we always have more cool ideas to put in; However, making day 1 DLC only after the game has gone Gold isn't nearly as common as it once was. It's lucrative, so now it's actually part of

Wait until the "game of the year" or "platinum edition" or "gold edition" or "diamond edition" or "complete edition" goes on sale for $10 and you'll have ALL the DLC on day 1. On top of that, most of the compatibility and quest bugs will have been squashed.

Yarrr Maytee! I be one of yon vocal minority wot rattles 'is sabre in opposition to the phoney copyright and patent artificial scarcity scams. Boycott be unto any lilly livered bilge rats playing Project $10, or foisting a fools booty on the lot of us with their intrusive DRM. Though I be a right fair and upstanding merchant myself and abstain from scuttling their digital ships, raping their virtual wenches, and absconding with their intangible "goods", they're within right to count me a Pirate! Dark d

Day 1 DLC that was on the disc to begin with is not content anyone should be paying money for. It is the most perverse form of DLC and all you're really "downloading" is the key to unlock it.

Day 1 DLC that is a result of work done after the game is gold yet still having the business end finalized are welcome in my opinion. This is the content I can see people finding value in. This is the content I would not mind spending money on.

Of course the distinction between these are often lost to the masses who eith

The issue is that if the DLC is already on the disc, then development time making the "base game" was spent on it, therefore it should be in the base game. Developers have no reason to delay the launch of the game so they can make all their DLC ahead of time just so it could be on the disc, so anything in day 1 DLC that's on the disc should have been part of the base game. It's really as simple as that.

If the DLC is on the disc it was finished before the game went gold. If it isn't on the disc it is usually the case that the additional content was written after the game was finished. At that point the programmers have already done the job they were paid to do, having them do more work for the 1-2 months between the game being finished and release requires more money. Some companies are willing to include the additional cost in the base game, but I can't really fault the ones that charge for it. (as lo

Bioware are blatant liars and greedy money mongers. Nothing else. Ever since they have joined with EA they have gotten worse and worse and worse. For many many years bioware made great games but ever since they joined with EA they have just been pimping dlc left and right and creating games that for the first time in their history have been garbage. All the DLC codes they were whoring in dozens of products for mass effect. Dragon age was pimping DLC before its release and it was a shit game. Even knights of the old republic is a major let down. Bioware's prestiege and pedigree has gone right down the crapper since joining EA.

Bioware before tried to say "Well the reason we had day 1 DLC for mass effect 3 was because we finished the game 6 weeks before it was released and that finished product had to have 6 weeks to be approved, then packaged and shipped to store. So in that time we decided to create the day 1 DLC to keep our teams busy blah blah blah". Bullshit. You cant tell me they suddenly at the drop of a hat decided to write, design, storyboard, create, build, code, debug, trouble shoot, beta test, bring voice actors in to record dialouge, have artists create the levels, sound guys put in effects, compile the code, submit it to sony/microsoft for approval to be uploaded and then uploaded it in less than 6 weeks? Horse shit.

Then what happens when mass effect 3 turns out to be yet another bioware turd? They blame the gamers. That bitch at bioware actually had the balls to say "gamers arent developers so dont act like them" because gamers didnt like the game. Ok sure Im not a developer, but that doesnt mean I cant know if I like something or not. Im no chef but I damn sure can tell you mcdonalds hamburgers suck, Im no director but I really hated the transformers movies, Im no author but I dont like the book atlus shruged. Just because I dont make games doesnt mean Im not able to dislike them and it doesnt mean I should automatically like everything just because the creator tells me I should because they say so.

So in short. Fuck bioware.

And now. Why DLC is bullshit.

1) When you pay for DLC you are telling developers "I want to pay more for my games. I am willing to pay you more than 60 dollars for my game". The more you buy DLC the higher the chances of games costing more instead of less because you prove youre willing to spend over msrp for a game.

2) Its all digital and you will never own it. DLC is digital content. You pay for it but you dont actually own it. You cant sell it, you cant trade it, you cant let a friend borrorow it and in 10 years from now Im willing to bet you wont even be able to download it again.

3) DLC encourages developers to split up content for the game you paid for full price for to sell you later. They design a game they say "We will take out this part and that part and sell it to them as extra" instead of saying "They paid full price for a game so they should get the full game". Developers/publishers would probablly sell more games if they would actually give their customers full games instead of selling partial games at full price and selling the rest for even more money.

4) DLC pisses off gamers when its sold as incentives at different stores. Say a game is coming out and 3 different stores has bonus DLC codes with each one being different. Now for gamers who really want that game and to play everything thats a asshole move.

Bottom line is I dont support developers that pimp DLC a lot, especially before the full game actually comes out. I buy their games used so I dont give them a single cent.

Fuck bioware and fuck every developer like them that forces DLC down our throats and then says we want it. Dont buy their games new, buy them used or pirate them.

Loved these guys in the Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights days, they supported a huge modding community and made in-depth, long RPG games that were a joy to play. Not so much now, though graphically Dragon Age is of course superior, I'd still take BG/NWN over DA any day.

Not sure if it's because they sold their soul to the devil (EA) or just greed, but they've become just another "rush it out the door, and nickel and dime them later" big company that forgot their roots imo. They don't even really support the mod community now, since they want to make their money by releasing ridiculously short RPGs (too much shiny fluff, not enough meat) then charge for DLCs from day 1. Patooeee...

This is why I hardly by games when they're released anymore. I'll wait until a year later when the special pack with the original game, patches, and all the DLCs comes out for 1/2 the price or less. I got like 9 premium titles with all the DLC/expansions during the Steam summer sale for like $55 a few weeks ago. They'll keep me busy for more than a year, easy.

A lot of problems would be solved if you wanted 3-6 months after a game is released to play it. The game drops in price, most bugs are fixed, and a lot of DLC becomes available, sometimes at a discount. I haven't played ME3 yet, and I'm glad I waited.

Despite what people may like to hear, there are a lot of people like me who, if there's no DLC available when they beat the game, don't ever pick up the game later. Even a couple weeks after I beat the game is way too long. If it's not there, I'm not going to spend the time popping in games I consider over and done with 3 months after the fact just for a small snippet of DLC.